As product purchases and monetary exchanges continue to emerge via the Internet, regulations have been enacted to control how these transactions are consummated. Generally, Internet transactions are referred to as electronic commerce or “e-commerce” transactions, which refers to the act of buying and selling products and services via electronic systems, such as the Internet.
There has been explosive growth in the use of the Internet as a medium for facilitating online ordering and purchasing. However, in most merchant cases, the effort to build a single e-Commerce Web Application to service multiple consumer driven applications can be overwhelming. In most situations, a merchant has to build multiple e-Commerce Web Applications either acting as individual fulfillment systems or independently connecting to a single fulfillment system.
With continued popularity and ease of these e-commerce transactions, the amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily as Internet usage becomes commonplace in today's society. A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically, e.g., for items such as bill payment, money transfers, service purchases, etc. However, many e-commerce transactions involve transportation of physical items following an on-line purchase.
Along with the emergence of e-commerce is a need for regulation to govern these types of transactions. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a worldwide information security standard defined by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The standard increases controls related to e-commerce data in an attempt to prevent credit card fraud and other malicious attacks. The standard applies to all organizations that hold, process, or exchange cardholder information from any card branded with the logo of one of the card brands.